


Nil Desperandum

by Deshah



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), Discworld - Terry Pratchett, The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Dimension Travel, F/F, L-space, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 18:23:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14836859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deshah/pseuds/Deshah
Summary: In which a young Lisa Snart finds L-Space, and things change from there.





	Nil Desperandum

When Lenny left for juvie, Lisa assured him that she would be okay. She’s a big girl now, after all. She can’t hide behind her brother forever. Lenny looked proud and sad and said _maybe so, but I’ll always be here if you need me. Okay?_ He hugged her goodbye and gave her a list of safe places to go if (when) their dad got angry.

_Just don’t stay here,_ he said, eyes haunted. _Please, Lisa. Promise me._

Of course she promised.

Then he was gone.

 

Dad didn’t get angry the first week, or the second or third. Lisa began to think she was safe.

She wasn’t.

It was a few days into the fourth week when he came home drunk and raging. Useless job, useless child; what good was she? What value was she bringing in?

He backhanded her across the face when she tried to back away.

It wasn’t the last bruise she got that night.

 

From then on, Lisa paid close attention to his moods. The moment he seemed irate - or started drinking - she fled.

There were several places on the list, but Lisa’s favorite was the public library[1]. There was a children’s section, which was alright, but what she really liked were the books about machines. She didn’t understand most of the words, but she could sit and look at the diagrams, puzzling out how things work and building them in her head, for hours on end.

Sometimes she didn’t want to, though.

It had been five and a half months since Lenny had been taken away, and she missed him more than ever. He was only two weeks away from coming back, she knew, but somehow that made things worse, not better.

Lisa was restless and lonely. She tried to focus on her diagrams, but found that she couldn’t; she tried to flip through the kids’ fiction books too, but couldn’t focus on those, either. 

That was how she ended up wandering the stacks, lost in melancholy.

Slowly, Lisa noticed how dark it was. Weren’t libraries supposed to be well-lit? And she’d been walking in a straight line for quite some time - too long. The public library was small.

Small and worn down, but clean, with shelves only about twice or three times her height - not these towering, dark giants, books obscured behind cobwebs and dust. The shelves went up forever and on forever, lit by a sourceless, eerie glow. Something skittered in the distance. 

This was the point where a more sensible child would have at least tried to turn back. Lisa Snart was not bereft of sensibility, but she was also extremely, powerfully curious - and she’d been terrified enough by real, tangible things that the eery light and looming darkness, distant creatures and cobwebs weren’t as frightening as they might have been. Lisa knew fear, and monsters; she lived with both. This didn’t compare.

(She was shaking, a little. Just barely. Perhaps in fear, a bit, but most of what she felt was _excitement_.)

**Author's Note:**

> 1This was not the first time Len had assured her that the library was safe, which just goes to show exactly how little he knew about both safety and libraries.[return to text]


End file.
